Free Example of Barratt Development Essay

Barratt Development PLC is a company based in the United Kingdom, which is majoring in building and developing properties. This company also participates in renewal of urban projects located in such cities as London and Manchester. Currently, it has offered direct employment to about 4000 employees. The vision of this company is to become the nation’s leading house builder. In addition, it aims at creating communities that people aspire to live. In the financial year that ended on June 2012, this company had group revenues of 2035.4 million pounds. In 2011, its profits were 42.7 million pounds while its profits in 2012 increased to 110.7 million. The high profits earned by this company made it to consider starting paying dividends to its shareholders in the next financial year. This paper assesses the appropriateness of the sustainability policy of this company by focusing on its sustainability report.

People

Barratt Development PLC relates well with its people. It offers equal employment opportunities to all people. In the financial year that ended in 2012, this company offered direct employment to over 4500 people to help in their commercial and residential developments. In addition, this company has strict anti-bribery and business ethics in order to ensure that people relate well with each other while they are in their work environments. It also provides learning and development opportunities for all its employees. It helps the employees to grow in their careers leading to low staff turnover rates in this company. It also rewards all the employees who show good performance through its Get Recognized program. In the financial year that ended in 2012, it issued about 1,100 Get Recognized instant awards. It motivated other employees to improve their performance. Barratt Development PLC also has a program known as Personal Development Review aimed at reviewing the performance of its employees. Its line managers set new training and development programs after reviewing the performance of their employees.

Partners

Barratt Development PLC also relates well with its partners. This company believes that collaboration with all its stakeholders is critical for the success of its operations. One of the established partnership schemes that this company has developed is the Castlewell, Ellon, Aberdeenshire partnership. This partnership worked with the local community and the Prince’s Foundation to develop 247 homes. It also supports charity programs. In the financial year that ended in 2012, it donated 30,000 pounds to different charity programs. Also, it works closely with its suppliers in order to ensure that it maintains an open and honest relationship with them. Since this company relates well with its partners, it received such awards as Best Regeneration Project, Best Community Initiative and Best Landscaping.

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Planet

This company also relates well with the planet. The management of this company has implemented policies that aim at ensuring it protects the environment. Its emphasis on environmental protection made it to set targets that aimed at reducing the amount of wastes produced from its processes by 5 percent. In addition, it has set a target of planting at least 10 trees or shrubs in every new project completed in this financial year. This company also introduced sustainable housing design in an attempt of ensuring that all its projects conformed to the environmental requirements. It made it to re-launch its Q-17 design competition on April 2012. The aim of this competition was to ensure that the quality of all its designs was high. This company has groups known as Green Teams whose main responsibility is ensuring that all the projects that they adopt save energy and costs. Barratt and Wilson Homes are a product of the Green Teams.

Consumers

Barratt Development PLC also relates well with all its consumers as it believes that its success depends on how it treats its customers. Its commitment to improving the level of consumer satisfaction in all the products enabled it to earn the award for Scotland’s Best Customer Service Initiative Award in May 2012. The management of this company says that the improvement in its service delivery is attributed to the Barratt Quality and Cost Program that was launched in 2010. This company offers a 5-year warranty on all the commercial and private developments that it sets up. This warranty covers almost all standard fixtures and fittings. Since this company always wants to maximize the level of its consumer’s satisfaction, it launched the Winning Customers For Life program. The aim of this program was to ensure that its employees offered quality services to all consumers. Quality customer service made this company to earn a 98% Recommend a Friend score.

Assisting Consumers with Mortgage Products

Barratt Development PLC assists its customers with the mortgages products that it offers. It has a panel consisting of independent mortgage brokers that offer consumers quality financial advice before taking any mortgage. Since this company appreciates the fact that consumers may have limited finance to acquire mortgages to own houses, it introduced the NewBuy scheme in order to help consumers to acquire cheap loans. Using this scheme, it offers 95% mortgages on houses and flats in England. Barratt Development PLC and the guarantee from the government jointly fund this scheme. If customers are not able to purchase houses on the onset, they are offered the FirstBuy scheme that gives them a maximum of 20 percent equity loan. This company encourages divisions to establish close relationships with the local building societies in order to build houses that are readily accessible to the local communities. Willis backed this company with a mortgage indemnity policy helping it to launch 95 percent mortgage products for helping the local communities. Barratt Development PLC has also collaborated with the Hitachi Capital Limited in order to ensure that its customers obtain mortgages for owning their homes. Hitachi Capital Limited offers unsecured loans to customers who qualify to obtain loans from their institution.

New Products

Also, this company introduced new products. One of the new products that it recently introduced is the Ward Homes. Currently, it has 57 homes that are located in 11 development projects in South East. Consumers can easily purchase homes from the Ward Homes since they can receive a 95 percent financial assistance from the NewBuy Scheme. In addition, houses purchased from the Ward Homes have a lease back guarantee. The company introduced new products under David Wilson Homes. Under this brand, it has developed new houses for large families.

Health and Safety

Barratt Development PLC always emphasizes on creating a healthy and safe work environment for its employees. It made it to set a target of reducing the injury rate of workers by 5 percent before the end of its financial year that ended in 2012. In order to ensure high health and safety standards are observed on all its construction sites, it created an awareness poster campaign that aimed at educating its employees on all the site-based hazards that could affect them. In addition, it partnered with the Prostrate Cancer Charity in the production of posters that informed the employees on how to avoid being exposed by hazardous materials while they worked on sites. This company also reviews all the tower cranes that operate in their developments to ascertain that they are safe and that they cannot cause harm to people that operate them.

In 2012, it also conducted comprehensive audits in an attempt of finding out whether its developments attained good levels of compliance. The results of the audit that this company carried out revealed that all its major developments were able to attain good levels of compliance. This company started a program known as Safety Schemes in Procurement in order to ensure that suppliers delivered products construction materials that attained the required health and safety standards. Since this company concentrates on ensuring that it attains high health and safety standards, it was awarded the NHBC Health and Safety Awards of 2012 as 13 of the site managers of this company were awarded for the efforts that they put to ensure that their construction sites were safe and healthy to work in.

Level of Customer Satisfaction

The level of customer satisfaction on the products that this company offers is high since the company involves the customer by utilizing their feedback when they develop their products. When this company launched Ward Homes and DWH brands, it launched new websites in order to market these products. It utilized the feedback collected from customers in order to design their website after these new products were launched. Since consumers were involved in the design of their new website, their level of satisfaction also improved.

Overall, the sustainability report of Barratt Development PLC shows that this company’s sustainability policy is appropriate. The policies established by this company have helped it to relate well with people, partners, planet, and consumers, assist consumers with mortgage products, and introduce new products. In addition, it has helped it to create healthy and safe working environment for all its employees, and improve the level of consumers’ satisfaction. The disclosures in this sustainability report were adequate since Barratt Development PLC provided all relevant and material information regarding how it collaborated with its suppliers in order to ensure that they delivered materials that were safe and healthy. In addition, this report shows the programs that Barratt Development PLC introduced in order to ensure that high level of consumer satisfaction is attained.